This city council is all about spending. They have moved this city backwards. RECALL!!!

Water meters are hated wherever they have installed them,and everything suffers because of the cost they create to consumers.
The lack of water itself is not the issue.
It is the lack of infrastructure to get to where it is needed that is the problem.
Meters are a money grab, as opposed to the expense of upgrading the water supply itself.
We just keep adding to an outdated and limited supply capacity.
Last time I looked,there was lots of water in the Fraser River?
Unfortunately there is no plumbing to make it part of the system.
Water meters are not a solution.
They simply prolong the expense of fixing it right and give the politico's more money to waste on other things!

Yep, keep raising the taxes and fees and more and more people will leave this stinky city.

It has become abundantly clear that Dan Rodgers and his merry band of councillors and much like Gordon Campbell and his liberal friends. Raise taxes, increase user fees, lie to the public, waste money on unaffordable projects like the PAC, the community energy heating system, purchase more and more property in the city core, not to mention the money sucking organization known as IPG.
Unfortunately the citizens of PG do not have recall but just maybe city council will take note when some liberal MLA's lose their position at the trough when the recall gets under way.

Prince George's unemployment rate jumped two points to 9.3 last month (PG Citizen, August 30, 2010). Poverty is on the rise, and so are our taxes! Big investors are pulling out, and to add to the already increasing financial troubles of our residents, our forward thinking municipal leaders are looking at ways to make the financial worries of our citizens even more burdensome by considering imposing water meters upon homeowners!! As Meisner has stated, PG is sitting on an abundant water supply. This is a stark contrast to other communities that have had to use water meters due to limited water supply. This looks to me like just another money grab, and yet another failure to look at our crumbling infrastructure. They will take our money through taxes, meters, and still neglect to strengthen and repair the system.

Council just decided to raise the utilitiy bills by a whopping margin, city taxes have been rising astronomically and now they are trying to foist water meters on residents. Do the(jelly) bean counters at city hall figure that the proceeds from the proposed water meters will pay for more pie in the sky projects like the PAC aka culture vulture ventures? Sounds like they are just looking for a way to skin residents and think that by hiding under the guise of being green we'll have to climb on board. Slick...NOT! Council had better remember who they represent. We are not all transplants from lotus land. Ask a redneck what they think of water meters and then hold on to your hat. Instead of taxing the population to death for crap we don't want or need, could they get some fiscal advice from someone that doesn't have their head...you know where and rein in the spending?
Can you say one term cause that is what I am thinking.

Remember the story about garbage collection. How the new system would reduce cost This sounds like the same song. What will the cost be to install the meters and how long will it take to get their money back? But we know they will increase taxes not wait for the return from the meters.

And I say again its not council that is pushing this idea it’s the mandarins at city hall that are bleeding us because of their incompetence. The Mayor in the last Free Press told us that the media will be another source of info for My Pg.. So lets give him lots of info o this site.

What is MyPG? ... ;-)

You do not really buy into that, do you retired?

Let's remember all these expensive useless shenanigans when the next municipal election comes around again!

Please!

I think everyone should be aware of the bigger picture. All these people are in contact with other municipalities, whether it is administration or Council. These programs go through the system like wildfire. Once one group does it, reports out with a power point at meetings how it is accomplished, all of the sudden we have the birth of a new project.

A few get together, lobby the feds, and they got a Build Canada project out of it. All these projects need a name of course, something like a military operation, LOL.

So up go the federal taxes, and up go the provincial taxes fro their participation and up go the local taxes for our participation.

Here is the project in North Bay. mandatory there. Being installed as we write.
http://northbaywatermeter.ca

"The City has secured both Federal and Provincial grant funding under the Build Canada program to cover 66% of the overall $6.1M capital cost of the program."

Soon we will see a similar announcement for PG, although they got quite a bit of money for Boundary Road already.

I am not sure why retrofitting a system that is working perfectly well is a "build" project as opposed to a tweaking project.

Be lucky that so far the City is taking the route of volunteer and new houses only. Watch that change when they get senior government funding.

In the meantime, social security is underfunded ...... I can see where the priorities are. Keep the water underground and let it flow to the US border where they will pump it up.

We were also told that the HST would actually lower costs.
It will be good for you!
That also came from a politician/s.
Safer to assume that if they are speaking...they are probably lying.

I think that all decisions made by elected officials that significantly impact the tax payer, such as this water meter scheme(if in deed it does move forward) should be going through a community consultation process. This would allow for community input, enforce some accountability of elected officials, and I know personally, I would feel a little less like I am living under a dictatorship, municipally, provincially and federally.

When we look at what’s happening in other cities lets be relevant and look at those that are the size of PG. Like Kamloops, Nanaimo and my favorite is Red Deer AB. It happens to have a climate much like ours. It now has a population 87,816m . In 1999 it had a population of 63,940. Since then each year the population has increased..

When you go to their web site their budget is laid out on two pages. It gives the percentages of the tax that dollar goes to each city service. Emergency Services-17.6%, RCMP-15 % and so on.
The city of PG ‘s budget has 169 pages and you have to be an accountant to figure it all out, They are great for graph’s They have one page for what services gets what amount . But many of the services are lumped together like police and fire services.

And the big picture is that taxes for a $213,000.00 home are two thirds of the same home in PG.. That is my property taxes in PG are $2400.00 and in Red Deer they are $1600.00.
Cheers

Didn't Rogers vote aganist the latest increases? Hmmm . . .

Anyway, I tend to agree with the general theme here. The notion of paying for water in PG is simply goofy. Have we EVER had a water shortage? Have we ever been CLOSE to having a water shortage? If the infrastructure needs upgraded, isn't that what property taxes, reserves and grants should cover?

At some point in time maybe someone should go back to the Provincial and Federal Governments and ask them how their strategy of lower incomes taxes over the years has been working out. Best as I can tell, all it's really done is reduced the amount of money available for transfers to the Provinces (and ulitmately cities), which means playing "catch up" with stuff like HST, property tax increases, utilities increases, water meter plans, etc. That and it's also meant less money for the critical things we all need like health care, social security, roads, etc. Oh well, I'm sure the richest Canadians appreciate the assistance. Oh wait, they probably complain about the roads the most. You know, those new vehicles and their expensive suspensions and all, LOL.

Retired ... I thought you might be interested in a community where tax rates actually went down this year. Over 2% in North Bay. It has a large forestry base as well. Actually more comparable in many ways than Alberta towns that are subsidized by provincial oil money that we send them every time we drive a vehicle.

http://www.cityofnorthbay.ca/common/pdf/compro.pdf

How do they reduce taxes? Easy. They install water meters .... :-)

Poor Palopu would have nothing to complain about in North Bay ... LOL ...

oh, forgot, they got HST there too.

I live in Vernon and YES, we do pay more for our water (almost twice as much) but our property taxes are less than half of what we paid in PG.

For the same assessed value by BC Assessment Authority our property taxes are 56% LESS than what we we're paying in PG.

That's a lot of money to me.

And as far as I'm concerned that trumps any water costs we pay in Vernon because overall we've discovered that it's (wait for it) cheaper to live here than in PG once you're here. We paid the same for our house here in Vernon as we sold our home for in PG.

Don't get me wrong... I was born and raised in PG. I spent 50 years there and I absolutely love that city. I'm just loving the fact that we get to enjoy our warmer nights while we save BIGTIME.

Not that I would want to have water meters but.........

I sure notice that there is a lot of waste when it comes to water. Just drive by a few houses on a hot sunny day and see all the sprinklers watering the crap out of the pavement because the homeowner doesn't want to move their sprinkler a few times.

Or then there's the toilet situation in our country. Everyone is still in love with the huge capacity flush toilets that take 10 gallons a flush.

Yes, PG has a good supply of water and getting charged for it does sound crazy. But just go to someplace like the Peace River or Australia and you might not be so keen on wasting water.....

It is one of Canada's greatest resources.

Some interesting stats on population density:

PG -> 229 people per sq km
Kamloops -> 270 people per sq km
Vernon -> 381 people per sq km
Kelowna -> 570 people per sq km
Lethbridge -> 607 people per sq km
Penticton -> 759 people per sq km
Nanaimo -> 881 people per sq km
Red Deer -> 1,188 people per sq km

Just a thought, but do you think there might be a relationship between the density of an area, the costs to service that area and the funds required (through property taxes and other fees assessed to the city residents) to provide those services?

Is it starting to make sense as to why things like downtown revitalization, infill development and stopping sprawl may be important for the city? Do people understand the conflcit that occurs with wanting the large city lot on the outskirts of town yet at the same time wanting their property taxes and other fees to be the same as a city with 2 or 3 times the density?

Water meters are all about privatizing the infrastructure so that a for profit company can guarantee their profits.

The city of PG is on the verge of a debt interest death spiral... once that happens they want to be able to make more short term cash selling off public essential infrastructure.

That's what its all about IMO. It has nothing to do with water shortages or efficiencies.

Water meters are just one more way of getting their hands in our pockets. We cut back and they have to increase rates to maintain revenue.

Now don't think for one second that if the population was to increase substantially in PG, that the costs of servicing this community would reduce. It will never happen.

The role of our municipal leaders seems to spend and spend, whether we can afford it or not. They are continually baited by money being offered by either or both Provincial and Federal Governments. They want to make sure they get their share, so the commit us to even more debt. It's a vicious circle. It seems that nobody is willing to cut back or give up anything.

I'm concerned about water meters too.

Once the population is properly conditioned into thinking of water as just another commodity, to be bought and sold in the "free market" it's an easy step in the progression toward privatization.

Water is too important to place into the hands of the profiteers.
We all have a right to clean water delivered through our public system.

When profit becomes the focus, the right to water goes to those who will pay the most.

Newtechguy: "We paid the same for our house here in Vernon as we sold our home for in PG."

Is it the same size as well and the same proximity to downtown?
-------------------------------
mwk: "just go to someplace like the Peace River or Australia and you might not be so keen on wasting water....."

Of course not! We have tons of it. It is not that there is no water here. As NMG has pointed out one more time, we live in sprawlsville and EVERYTHING that has to be connected to the residences takes more per residence whether that is water, sewers, gas, electricity, road pavement, sidewalk pavement, street lights, snow clearing, sanding, removal of sand, public transit distances, additional lawns and garden surface areas to water (I believe around 2/3rds of water used by homeowners in Canada is used to water outdoor green spaces - three guesses where we could REALLY save on water and the first two do not count).

Water metering is not going to save us water. It will mean like everything else, those with money will not care about spending another $10/month for using water, while those with little money will watch their water use and will come up short, as always.

Just think, move more people into condos and the amount of water use will drop significantly, especially if one lives in those beautiful condos/rentals on the south side of Ferry between Westwood and Ospika where the landscaping is asphalt special. Take some meter readings in there and they will say that those people use less water than the average person in PG. That will skew the figures for sure! A spin doctor's paradise just waiting to be used to promote the notion that water meters do the job.

newtechguy .... some information for you about Vernon that you might not know. Also, same information about PG

Vernon Community facts based on consistent methodology applied across the province.
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/dd/facsheet/cf246.pdf

Same for PG
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/dd/facsheet/cf163.pdf

If you want to see other communities, you can knock yourself out here:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/dd/facsheet/facsheet.asp

So, from those sheets here are the facts based on the same representative house size, age, relative location, etc. If you do not understand that notion, I am sorry, I cannot help those who simply refuse to try to understand the notion of using median house price in a community or representative house in a community to compare one community's property taxes to another.

The first numbers following the year are always from Vernon, the second from PG.

1. Representative house prices
2005 $207,901 $115,598
2006 $245,546 $133,609
2007 $320,852 $166,404
2008 $390,685 $214,378
2009 $391,657 $209,060

2. Taxes for the representative house
2005 $3,011 $2,421
2006 $2,763 $2,495
2007 $2,961 $2,619
2008 $3,846 $2,777
2009 $3,790 $2,867

3. percent change in taxes
2005
2006 -8.2% 3.0%
2007 7.2% 5.0%
2008 29.2% 6.0%
2009 -1.5% 3.2%

4. Change in taxes from 2005 to 2009
Vernon +25.9%
PG +18.4%

5. Now here is the big one:
difference in tax for a representative house in Vernon versus PG in 2009

$3,790 - $2867 = $923 or 24% less than Vernon.

I just took a look at Kamloops and Nanaimo as well.

In 2009 a person living in a representative house in PG paid 16.3% less than someone living in a similar house in Kamloops and 9.2% less than someone living in such a house in Nanaimo.

"We all have a right to clean water delivered through our public system."

We do? So what about those people who live inside the city boundaries and are on wells because there is no municipal service?

Not sure what you mean by a reprsenative house Gus. Do you have any idea how they arrive at these numbers.

Would that be the average house price for houses in a certain range???

How would you arrive at a representative price of a similiar house, in the Hood, as opposed to a house in College Height, or the Hart Highway.??

It appears that according to stats bc, the representative house is the average house price. You can go to this link http://www.civicinfo.bc.ca/81_ver2.asp to create your own tables. It will use the average pice for the representative house.

Interestingly the glossary provided by stats bc does no include a definition for representative house, something I looked for when I did my first post.

It makes eminent sense to use that for this purpose since you do not have to be too concerned about socio-economic differences among various areas of a community which have similar house styles/sizes but differ in age class and maintenance.

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/15068

That link is to some of the residential assessments in PG subdivisions for 2010. It does not actually say what the prices represent. I would think that they are either the average(mean) or median assessed values for the subdivision.